Pope Pius XII - On Rural Life - "Mother Earth"

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“More than anyone else. you live in continual contact with nature. It is actual contact, since your lives are lived in places still remote from the excesses of an artificial civilization. Under the sun of the Heavenly Father your lives are dedicated to bringing forth from the depths of the earth the abundant riches which His hand has hidden there for you. Your contact with Mother Earth has also a deep social significance, because your families are not merely consumer-communities but also and especially producer-communities.”

Pope Pius XII called earth “Mother Earth”. What should I think about this?
 
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Myself I don’t refer to Mother Earth .My only real mother is Mary 🤔
Mother Earth isn’t taking care of me,ultimatly it is God .
 
Did you check to see to whom he addressed the text? (Which would have been delivered in Italian). I’ll inform you: In 1946, to the delegates at the convention of the National Confederation of Farm Owner Operators. . …in Rome.

He also made allusions to Virgil.

He spoke of the earth as a ‘wounded creature’ later.

I suggest that you look up the term “metaphor’ and ponder it. Also “idiom”.
 
We ‘can’, and with due care can do so with perfect propriety.

The problem is that for a sizeable number of English speakers in AD 2020, “Mother Earth’ has become anthropomorphoric; a kind of neo-paganized and sentient ‘force’ as opposed to a metaphor used to portray an aspect of the earth—its fecundity and its role in feeding the people.

We can also use “gay’” as a synonym for carefree and happy today. But a vast majority of people reading that word are going to associate it with “homosexual’.

A vast majority of people hearing and seeing the term “Mother Earth” are going to likewise associate it with a relativistic, quasi pagan ‘cosmic life force’ and sentient entity which we should treat AS such. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature’. . .as if the ‘force’ of “Mother Nature” or “Mother Earth’ has a power to ‘act’ the way that a person or group of people does, or to FEEL as a person or group feels.
 
SaintBenedict said:
“More than anyone else. you live in continual contact with nature. It is actual contact, since your lives are lived in places still remote from the excesses of an artificial civilization. Under the sun of the Heavenly Father your lives are dedicated to bringing forth from the depths of the earth the abundant riches which His hand has hidden there for you. Your contact with Mother Earth has also a deep social significance, because your families are not merely consumer-communities but also and especially producer-communities.”

Pope Pius XII called earth “Mother Earth”. What should I think about this?
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It’s an expression, signifying the way the natural world nurtures and supports us and society at large.

Peace .
 
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It’s a traditional concept from Judeo Christianity forever.

Sirach 40 1 Hard work was created for everyone, and a heavy yoke is laid on the children of Adam, from the day they come forth from their mother’s womb until the day they return to the mother of all the living.

Basil the Great (4th century) The fertility of the earth is its perfect finishing; growth of all kinds of plants, the upspringing of tall trees, both productive and sterile, flowers’ sweet scents and fair colours, and all that which, a little later, at the voice of God came forth from the earth to beautify her, their universal Mother. (Hexameron, Homily II)

Augustine of Hippo (4th century) For many things plucked from trees, or pulled out of the ground, are the better of some interval of time before we use them for food, as leeks and endive, lettuce, grapes, apples, figs, and some pears; and there are many other things which get a better color when they are not used immediately after being plucked, besides being more wholesome for the body, and having a finer flavor to the palate. But these things should not possess all these excellent and agreeable qualities, if, as you say, they become more destitute of good the longer they are kept after separation from their mother earth. (On the Morals of the Manichaeans, par. 43)

Nay, not even the earth itself do we call a creator, though she seems to be the prolific mother of all things which she aids in germinating and bursting forth from the seed, and which she keeps rooted in her own breast; for we likewise read, “God gives it a body, as it has pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.” (City of God, Book XII, Ch. 25)

There are so many more examples as to completely debunk any theory that the concept doesn’t belong in Christian theology.
 
The concept is fine, but as with so many things, due to ambiguity and to corruption —not necessarily moral corruption, more a distortion—we have to be careful that when we use terms which mean something to a large segment of the population which is very different from what they mean to us, that we clarify and make sure that our meaning is understood.

It’s like the word ‘prayer’. To a large majority of Protestant Christians the word ‘prayer’ means, “communication with GOD ALONE”.

To a majority of Catholic Christians, the word prayer means (as it has from the time of the apostles and from the Jews before them, “communication” itself, whether in the form of praise, thanksgiving, request for information, etc.)

When Shakespeare had a character say to another, “Prithee sir where are you going”, the word Prithee meant “Pray Thee” and the actual meaning of the word was, “I ask you” or ‘tell me”.

Similarly ‘worship’ was rooted in ‘worth ship’ or ‘the quality of worth in a person’ and that continues as the Catholic understanding, while the majority of Protestants take it to mean, “What is offered to God alone.”

Words matter and meaning matters.

I have no problem at all speaking metaphorically of Mother Earth; nor do I have a problem speaking of prayer or worship; all of these things are legitimate concepts and familiar in Christian terms. . .

But there is a fundamental (no pun intended) difference in the way that large groups of people define all these words and concepts, so when I use them, I make sure that i include the meaning as is understood by Catholics (as held through the ages; I’m well aware that a minority of Catholics over the last centuries, especially in the last few decades, have wanted to be more ‘ecumenical’. And I’m not against ecumenism either. I certainly want Christians to come to the fullness of truth and be as One. I’m just saying that it seems more likely that if as Catholics we believe that we hold the fullness of truth that the way to be ecumenical to Protestants (and others) is to bring them closer to the fullness we have, not back away from our fullness to a ‘less full’ understanding and say, “Well yeah it’s not quite full but if we back off and accept their definition we will be one’. not QUITE the way to fullness, that!
 
I’ll probably have this statement deleted because it’s happened before, but it’s not possible for someone who knows God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit to worship the earth as if it was a god or goddess. They would be just playing games. But recognising the earth as sacred nourisher by virtue of its being a gift for us of the Creator, is natural and holy. That pagans who didn’t know God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit regarded the nourishing earth as a mother goddess is also natural and holy. They were responding to the will of God albeit limited by invincible ignorance. The new testament barely even mentions that idolatry as a temptation for Christians but rather the idolatry of greed and idolatry of the flesh are our temptations.

I thought the vitriol about the Amazon ceremony at the Synod was at best misguided. At worst it was so damaging to the fullness of a Catholics faith. Society at large in the wealthy west has exploited and abused the environment shamelessly to the point of directly and indirectly causing poverty and destruction to whole communities and whole countries around the world. It’s a modern moral outrage and who else but the Church should advocate against immorality that destroys fellow human beings?

And I am not talking only from personal Catholic experience but as someone who has always been guided by the Popes and Magisterium. I always encourage others, don’t listen to all these false prophets trying to discourage your faithful submission to the Church and listen to them! Trust that the Holy Spirit has you and your obedient submission well in hand. To this very day that has never failed me and my family as Catholics.

Hopefully this speech by Pope St JPII in Bolivia will assure people that Christians don’t need to be afraid of the value of expressions of maternity of the earth and filial love for nature. In fact they need to return to giving sacred value to these gifts as good and Holy.

“The Lord continues to accompany your work with His help. He takes care of the birds of the sky, of the lilies that are born in the field, of the grass that sprouts from the earth (Mt 6, 26-30). This is the work of God, who knows that we need the food that the earth produces, that varied and expressive reality that your ancestors called “Pachamama” and that reflects the work of divine Providence by offering us His gifts for the good of man.”
 
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I don’t believe Christians are ‘afraid’ of using any term; they are simply concerned that the term be understood correctly.

Like it or not, there is a large number of ‘non-Christian’ i.e. nones, ‘spiritual but not religious’, as well as poorly catechized Christian people who have been conditioned to accept societal definitions or ‘majority definitions’, because if they do NOT they are accused of ‘forcing their definitions down others’ throats’ etc.

Look at how few Catholics for example apparently believe or accept the doctrine of the Real Presence. As far as this rather huge number in AD 2020 are concerned, the Eucharist is ‘symbolic’, i.e., it is just like the definition of Eucharist in Protestant churches, or as ‘symbolic’ as a pagan symbol to a pagan.

Talking about the Eucharist without making the distinction of the Real Presence would (and has, and does) lead many, Catholics included, to believe that the Catholic Eucharist is ‘the same as’ any nonCatholic Eucharist. Which in turn leads to anger and upset when Larry Lutheran and Nancy NonDenom are told they ‘cannot receive’ in a Catholic Church.

All the decades of trying to find ‘similarities’ without being clear where the differences lie has caused this problem to get worse, not better.

It may surprise you but I agree with you that the symbolism of Mother Earth, especially in the many beautiful poetic examples over millennia, is perfectly acceptable when understood in the Catholic Christian sense; the earth, as given to us by God to ‘give us’ flora and fauna for our nourishment, is a metaphoric mother. But it is not a life force in itself similar (not identical to) the way in which “Gaia” was seen to early Greeks or kami to early Japanese. . .for those concepts and others assign a status of semi deity to a planet made of rock, not a being with body and soul.
 
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